Shorth

Cracking Down on Piracy

It seems that many countries are taking some steps towards fighting piracy. Some of them even want to force Internet service providers to fight with illegal file-swapping, and are warning that they will introduce its own legislation to make them do so. While encouraging creativity is a noble cause, I think that the way they want to implement it is not a good idea. How can we imagine ISPs to fight with illegal file-sharing? Obviously, that would mean monitoring every download that a user makes or blocking peer to peer programs like torrents. When it comes to the first solution, it seems similar to monitoring every phone call you make. That is ridiculous and it is really sad that many citizens do not understand that their privacy rights will be completely ignored. Second solution to block programs like torrents is flawed as well, because they offer the possibility to distribute non-copyright content like old books and other important materials. Fighting against piracy is an important thing, but we need to do it in a wise way. We need to fight against piracy in a way that does not violate anyone’s privacy. The Internet will only continue to be popular if people will know that ISPs are not tracking all of their moves.